I speak in tongues all the things too glorious for language, too acapella for melodic song, my brown body be the wind rolling off the drums, be the sweet cruise of my mother’s hums.
— Beckoning of the Wind: An Ode to Motherhood
I grew up seated at the feet of my grandmother’s reminiscing mind. Her recital of past remembrances was ritual, something I now realize was her way of saying I was here, and I lived and loved, and I fought, and I have the wounds to show you.
Her wounds have been carried by many of the women in my family, who were made small and often mandated to live within certain margins that were too narrow for them to truly exist in. We women are multifarious. When constricted to terrains unable to hold space for our vast beings, that is where our suffering begins. And so, surely, the suffering began and has since stretched for generations.
I never truly understood the weight of belonging to women without sanctuary, without freedom, without tongues. And to clarify, I don’t necessarily mean fully without, but such things seemed largely absent from their daily experiences according to what I witnessed and adopted. Coming from these women, I was born of the fire and the fury that was forced to simmer in each of their bones, often to the brim but never boiling over. The world gave them their place, insufficient as it was, and they existed in it. The world tried to coerce me into the same box, telling me that I could only ever belong there, yet I have defied and resisted with all my might since emerging from my mother’s womb. And I will continue to until the day that I am dust and bone.
These women that I come from often had no refuge. They existed in the captivity of inherited ancestral trauma. They became foreigners to their own voices. These things I never wanted to sanction into my own existence for the fear of being tormented with the same misery. I never wanted to buy into the long suffering that Black women are often expected to endure before they “earn” their ease. But, I was birthed from them — these women who have learned to subsist in pieces of their totality.
All that I am exists here, under the prayers and whispers and ache of my foremothers. Under the song, the sound, the carrying of their joy and their pain. I am woven into their tapestry, and now I think about what it means to undo the seams of the generational curses that are also entwined into the mosaic of our lineage.
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My mother always claims that she is no singer, yet growing up, I remember how she would never shy away from song. Her worship didn’t only belong to Sundays. It poured from her bones with every waking hour — a soft hum or an arbitrary belting out of notes that congregated to form a tune. She would make our house tremble under the echoes of her praise.
There were nights I would roll over in my bed, shared between myself and my two younger sisters, and catch my mother marking the walls and doors of our home with anointing oil before she pressed her fingertips to our foreheads. “Inviting God in,” she would reckon. “He dwells in the praises of His people, and so I pray.”
These were instances of the only time I ever truly saw her free. Most other moments, I witnessed how she would swallow her words whole, as would many of the other women I come from. As much as I fought it, I became a reiteration of these women in ways I vowed I never would. There were moments where I dulled my voice, moments where I was only as free as the caged bird. But my beauty has been in breaking from the chains that have held us hostage for so long, as many times as I have to, because I have a commitment to heal.
There’s this poem that I wrote before becoming a mother when I first gained awareness of my calling to alleviate the afflictions that have kept my lineage bound:
Eve’s fingers wove webs, my mother’s fingers wove webs, my fingers weave webs, but for my daughters and sons I must untwist these vines so they can catch the sun and not fold to thread webs as well. Eve’s ghost is catching stones, my mother’s hands are calloused, my fingers are growing indigo, but for my daughters and sons I must soften these curses so their fingers can be softened and not grow to harden as well.
Revisiting these words has been a reminder of the work that I am constantly after to unweave the doings of our generational suffering. While the baton of familial tribulation had been passed down for me and my sisters to carry, my positioning became and has since remained that it’s a race I am not willing to sacrifice myself to.
My demand is for restoration. For ease.
My healing is a curation of the exploration of my wounds, battle scars I’ve collected and bruises that have traveled underneath our skin for centuries. I am only a woman who found something to do with all her pain, who gained the courage to face it — and that has marked the genesis of my becoming.
Who I am is a force knit by the prayers of Black women. Without the weapons of their language, going before God before I was even a thought, I would not be such a flame in a world that has tried so hard to douse me. I have given words to the hums of my mother, proved the intercessions of my foremothers to have been worthwhile. I have carried a torch in my own name, blazed my own trail, and refused to exist within restraint.
The anointing over me comes from these Black women who spoke in tongues for me, praying heaven unto earth, into my name. My name marks a beginning. It is a sacred place. A point of offering. A chosen land. I am a holy forthcoming from my foremothers’ wombs, their language the thickening of my bones. All that I am exists here, under the invocation and whispers and ache of them. Under the song, the sound, the carrying of their joy and their pain.
Every moment I am breaking into myself, more and more becoming unbound. More and more unweaving these webs, freeing our song. It is a constant tango through life — learning and unlearning and restructuring the narratives of which I am birthed from.
I am like the wind rolling off the drums. One beat slows and another one comes. A new rhythm has formed in my wake and my limbs move more loosely, more abundantly like water, like a river flowing into herself. This is the dance that I carry. This is the duty that I surrender to: knees bending hands clasping feet running swiftly going blood dripping from the grooves of my palms as I unyoke from these chains.
This is my restorative disruption — the kind that sends all my trauma trembling to the bone.
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